Bentley Systems announced that it has acquired the French company Acute3D, provider of Smart3DCapture software for reality modeling.

Acute3D Smart3DCapture has five different editions, two of which are what the company refers to as “prosumer” editions; consumer customers and professionals working on small non-georeferenced projects can use these two editions to simply generate 3D models from photos.

Through reality modeling, photos from a variety of sources, including those from smartphones as well as high-resolution aerial imaging, can capture existing conditions that are then identified, processed and assigned points and texturized automatically into accurate representations of reality. The resulting high resolution, 3D mesh can be exported into GIS or CAD software. This is a standalone application for the desktop.

Bentley’s broad view of products dedicated to infrastructure is a good fit for Acute3D and helps both organizations extend their reach, as they are focused on the infrastructure lifecycle, from design through construction and into operations.

Acute3D is designing reality capture software for UAV operators who consume photos from various sources. “UAVs are capturing data with cameras for specific purposes,” said Dr. Jean-Philippe Pons of Acute3D. “They are used largely for land surveying for volume calculations features and reporting changes to the owners. The rest of the technology is the same whether you’re using it for UAVs or for mobile mapping.”

Acute3D already has amassed a number of customers and UAV manufacturers who are using their reality modeling Smart3DCapture.

Other areas in which Acute3D products are being used are on the site-to-city scale, for transportation, roads, mining, oil and gas. The beauty of the Smart3DCapture is that, with very little effort, customers can automatically generate from photos a 3D ‘reality mesh’ that is very accurate and detailed. These 3D ‘reality meshes’ can be exported into different software and can be used in the final data representations for contextual alignment for design modelingand construction modeling environments.

By beginning with existing conditions garnered from photos of the site, data capture can be achieved more simply and more affordably than from laser scanning.

Acute3D was co-founded in 2011 by researchers Dr. Jean-Philippe Pons and Dr. Renaud Keriven, who have led an accomplished team of researchers and developers, headquartered in Sophia Antipolis. In the beginning, Acute3D worked with an OEM in a cloud-based capacity that acquired over 6 million users of this solution; they focused on geospatial and became more involved in mobile mapping.

They decided to develop their own desktop application rather than remain with OEMs, because they wanted contact with the end users and wanted to be ready to react to the market. Smart3DCapture is the result of that decision.

Since the company was founded, Acute3D has attracted an impressive, expanding user base that includes Nokia, PASCO, and Saint-Gobain, and OEM licensees like Autodesk. Large-scale 3D city modeling is an area being explored by Acute3D with Internet giant Tencent where they are teaming up to design and build several mega-cities in China, from both aerial and street view photography. Acute3D applications also extend to gathering existing conditions capture for construction sites, manufacturing facilities, mining operations, pipelines, and oil and gas exploration.

Bentley Systems Founder and CTO Keith Bentley said, “The world-class Acute3D developers have already achieved two breakthroughs, which remove the barriers to the adoption of reality modeling. First, Acute3D has made it possible for anyone to sufficiently capture existing conditions with just a camera. Of equal importance is the value of the Acute3D result. Rather than a voluminous cloud of discrete points, Acute3D produces a 3D ‘reality mesh’ – intrinsically in the same geometric idiom as engineering models, readily aligning the real-world context.

“Just as Acute3D’s innovations have now brought reality modeling within reach of every infrastructure professional, we and our new colleagues are excited to be working together to incorporate Acute3D functionality throughout our platform and application portfolio, enhancing information mobility throughout infrastructure asset lifecycles.”

Acute3D Dr. Jean-Philippe Pons said, “When Renaud and I founded Acute3D, our vision was to make widely available, at industrial precision, what we now describe as reality modeling. With our team, we are very pleased to be joining Bentley to complete our reach. Together, we have already shared and embarked upon many new initiatives to incorporate reality modeling within design and construction modeling. Voila!”

Cities worldwide are charged with the same challenge: that of creating or retrofitting sustainable, intelligent infrastructure. Cities need the best in design, geospatial, visualization and analytical tools to realize a viable and intelligent city design. 3D City design is architectural design times thousands, plus it must have the ability to be interwoven with other surrounding infrastructure and foster an urban conversation.

Andrew Anagnost, Autodesk senior vice president of Industry Strategy & Marketing, spoke recently about the new initiative from Autodesk in which new commercial seats of most standalone desktop software products will be available only by Desktop Subscription beginning February 1, 2016.

David Burczyk, Segment Manager Field Solutions at Trimble, spoke with AECCafeVoice about the the company’s Rapid Positioning System, that includes Trimble RPT600 Layout Station, for layout of points and to capture them as-built measurements, and Trimble Field Link 2D software that runs on a performance tablet to control the layout station.

I’ve been reviewing what people have been discussing at conferences this year, and what their thoughts are for 2015. While so many topics such as Building Information Modeling (BIM) have been around for awhile, they are still very relevant moving forward. Customers are still grappling with challenging problems surrounding project delivery and collaboration. Others want to ensure that the model they build will not only last through the life of the project, but will extend beyond it into the future, for operations and maintenance. Reality capture, UAVs, scanning, data management, data acquisition as a service, cloud computing, are all technologies we have today, yet will be front and center in the AEC community going forward into the new year.

Looking ahead, advances in technology may have the biggest influence on the work that we will do in 2015 and the way that we do it. The dynamic, collaborative and performance-driven nature of our profession causes us to continue our quest for ever more efficient, meaningful and expedient ways of working.

Sefaira Systems is the new product from Sefaira for heating, ventilating and air conditioning (HVAC) design engineers that provides real-time performance analysis of mechanical systems and envelope options in record time, according to the company.

On the heels of previewing a new product for heating, ventilating and air conditioning (HVAC) design engineers and showcasing its latest performance analysis tools for architects at Autodesk University 2014 in December, Sefaira’s CEO Mads Jensen provides an update on Sefaira and the state of performance-based design.

Sefaira Systems is the new product from Sefaira for heating, ventilating and air conditioning (HVAC) design engineers that provides real-time performance analysis of mechanical systems and envelope options in record time.

At Autodesk University 2014 held in Las Vegas in December, Kevin Breslin Infrastructure Solutions Manager, IMAGINiT Technologies talked about new technologies that are being used by their consulting company and their clients this year. IMAGINiT is a provider of software, training, support and services to design and engineering companies and Autodesk Authorized Reseller and Autodesk Training Center.

La Pata Gap Closure, Orange County, California. Image courtesy of Huitt-Zollars and Orange County Public Works

John Bacus, director of SketchUp product management at Trimble, discussed with AECCafe Voice the new SketchUp 2015.

SketchUp Pro 2015’s Rotated Rectangle Tool draws rectangles that don’t have to be perpendicular or parallel to a default axis.

1. Do you see the IFC import as the most important addition to the new release, SketchUp 2015? And if so why?

IFC import has certainly captured the attention of many of our users in the construction industry, but SketchUp 2015 contains quite a few other important features as well. I like to think of SketchUp releases as offering a balance of new features, general improvements and core performance tuning. That said, with the addition of an IFC importer, SketchUp is now capable of participating in open building design and construction processes in some important new ways.

The IFC importer plays a key supporting role in a comprehensive new working style that we’ve been building into SketchUp for the last three releases— what I’ve been generally referring to as “information modeling.” The idea is that users should be able to work as quickly and efficiently with attributes and other non-graphical metadata on their models as they can with the model’s raw geometry. We want to extend the fast and loose sketching qualities of SketchUp beyond the ‘look’ of things and into their functional semantics.